Last Saturday I attended a family funeral and saw my Aunt Cookie, whom I had not seen in a few years. We look very much alike, very similar faces, same height, similar builds when young. I actually look more like her than I do my mother (they are sisters). She is only about eight years older than I am.

I am on this forum so of course have gained a lot of weight, but am now losing it thanks to the sleeve. Aunt Cookie appeared to weigh about 300 to 325, a good 50 - 75 pounds heavier than I was when I had wls. The image of her at that weight was so shocking! And even more shocking, I got a glimpse of where I was headed had I not intervened with the sleeve!

Every day I am so grateful that this option is available to us, and that it has gone so well and so easily for me.

I completely "get" this. It's humbling for me to imagine where I would have ended up... and sometimes you get to see it with your own eyes. Thank goodness for the sleeve!

This is the exact reason I chose to have the sleeve. I am 42 years old and in very good health (with the exception of asthma). My father (age 84) however, has high blood pressure, diabetes high cholesterol and prostate cancer. My mother (she passed 4.5 years ago at age 73) had breast cancer, lung cancer and high cholesterol. My brother (also passed, 4 years ago, at age 53) died of a brain tumor. My other sister (passed this past November, aged 46) died of breast cancer.

I am a walking time bomb, waiting to happen! I have one sister left (who's in good health too, thank goodness, and also at a fairly healthy weight).

I know that having the sleeve doesn't guarantee that I won't develop health issues, especially cancer which is rampant in our family. But I DO know that being in my ideal weight range and being active, as well as eating healthy foods in healthy portions is going to help increase my odds of a long, healthy and happier life.

If I should develop one or more of the health issues my family has, I will at least know that I've done everything I could do to help prevent it, by being in my ideal weight range, choosing well when it comes to food intake and exercising my body to help preserve it in top form!

I look just like my father who was my height (just about) and he was 450lbs, he died at 55 yrs of age he had all sorts of issues due to obesity, Hypertension, Heart disease, Apnea etc, etc which of course killed him... He made a comment to me a few weeks before he died which was "I wasn't that heavy at your age" (he was speaking of my weight at the time) which I was about 202 and I was 32 yrs old. That threw me 'cause he was way bigger than me buy a couple of hundred pounds but he was 23 yrs old than me, so I knew where I was heading if I didn't do something about it. Of course I dieted and so on and so forth really hard but wound up gaining another 50lbs. Thank God my insurance covered my surgery or I would've been in Big Trouble!